Thursday, 10 September 2015

An old tune from the BBC

THIS WEEK the BBC unveiled plans to start beaming daily propaganda
broadcasts to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and expand its
“World Service” to Russia, India and the Middle East to provide better
coverage to countries where there is a “democratic deficit in impartial
news”.

The BBC faces further cuts and scrabbles around to defend itself from
calls from within the Cameron government and the corporate media to
privatise or break the Corporation. The people are told to accept cuts,
make sacrifices and accept unemployment and poverty under the austerity
regime. But the BBC will have no problem in getting the millions needed
to join the Americans’ new psychological warfare offensive against any
country that stands in the way of imperialism.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is one of our supposed “national
treasures” whose aims are to educate, inform and entertain the public
that funds it through the licence fee. Under the motto “Nation shall
speak peace unto Nation” the Corporation claims to be a pillar of
impartiality and a reliable source of independent news at home and
abroad. That was never the case back in the 1920s when the BBC was
founded and it is certainly not the case now.

The Jimmy Savile affair has shown how easy it was for a dishonest and
manipulative man to use the BBC as a cover for his sinister activities.
Unfortunately for the last 68 years, the corporation has been happy to
allow its name to be used as cover by the British and US intelligence
services which operate with the same characteristics as Savile but to
far more deadly effect.

From the beginning the Corporation has served the interests of the
British ruling class at home and abroad. The BBC poses as impartial but
when the chips are down it simply becomes the mouthpiece of the ruling
class as it did during the General Strike in 1926 or the miners’ strikes
in 1972 and the 1980s. When the Cold War began the BBC, whose “World
Service” was directly funded by the Foreign Office until April 2014,
worked in tandem with the CIA to spread lies and disinformation to the
Soviet Union and the people’s democracies that emerged following the
defeat of the Axis in 1945.

In those days the BBC ran a sophisticated operation. Third World
diplomats would joke that while Radio Moscow and the Voice of America
broadcast were “95 per cent truth and five per cent lies” the BBC was
“97 per cent truth and only three per cent lies”. These days, with
constrained budgets and the general “dumbing down” that the bourgeoisie
encourages to stifle dissent, the BBC has abandoned any attempt at
caution or subtlety. Imperialist and Zionist propaganda is relayed at
face value and any old rubbish from anti-communist defectors is paraded
as unvarnished truth.

Last month Korea was on the brink of war following provocations from the
south Korean regime. It was averted following high-level negotiations
between the north and southern sides. It ended with the puppet regime
agreeing to halt its provocations in the Demilitarised Zone, giving the
go-ahead for a reunion of separated families and relatives and offering
to resume talks to lift economic sanctions on Democratic Korea.

The agreement was a set-back for reactionary south Korean leader Park
Geun Hye and her venal clique that serves the interests of US
imperialism. Now some of them want to turn the clock back.

US imperialism is planning to raise the issue of “human rights” in
Democratic Korea at the United Nations this autumn and a new hate
campaign is being prepared to back it up. The BBC plan is clearly part
of this US-led propaganda offensive against the DPRK.

But no one in Democratic Korea wants to hear the recycled lies of the
south Korean puppet regime on their radios and none of us should be
forced to pay for this nonsense.